Generally speaking certain printers employing ribbons on spindles allow various printer ribbon widths to be loaded on the spindle for different printing media. Printer ribbons of different widths have different torque requirements. The torque requirements affect print quality, print registration, ribbon slippage, and ribbon wrinkling. Thus it is important for the printer torque value to be set appropriate to the ribbon width loaded on the ribbon spindle.
While systems exist to automatically sense the size of print media loaded into a printer by having an electrical feedback connected to the media size adjustment mechanism, nothing such exists for printer ribbon rolls. Further such systems would not be tell the printer or user anything about the proper torque values to be used for any given printing job.
Therefore, a need exists for an automatic system which can sense a printer ribbon width on a printer ribbon spindle assembly and feedback this information to an onboard processor which can implement torque requirements.